My thoughts on: Avengers: Infinity War (spoilers!!)

Alright, this is it, this is the post where I hold nothing back about Avengers: Infinity War. This means a TON of spoilers are about to come out so if you have no seen the movie yet STOP NOW, do not go any further. You have been warned!!

Still here? Alright, let’s do this!

I have never heard a theater sit so quiet after a Marvel film ended in all my life. In the few minutes it took for the credits to play and reach the post-credits scene you could’ve heard a pin drop. And small wonder! We’d just seen the MCU as we know it completely turned on its head and destroyed!
I already talked about in my previous post how impressed I was with Josh Brolin’s performance as Thanos. I believed going in that Thanos was this completely evil villain that merely wanted to destroy half the universe…just because! But I was wrong, I was very wrong! Thanos is an example of Machiavellianism taken to the extreme. From his point of view, wiping out half the population will lead to more resources and living space for those who remain so everyone left will be much better off. Technically this IS true, however, that does not erase the fact that you have to kill untold trillions of people to make it happen! Despite this, Thanos genuinely seems to believe that he is doing the universe a favor, but I wonder if deep down he has any guilt about what he’s done, especially given what he had to do to get the Soul Stone.

When it came out that the Soul Stone was on the planet Vormir, a planet we’d previously never seen or heard of, I was a little disappointed. It seemed nonsensical that the one Infinity Stone we’d not seen until now would just show up on a random planet. But then Thanos (with Gamora) arrive on the planet and the scene becomes something else when it turns out the guardian of the Soul Stone is none other than…Red Skull!! I’d wondered, like others, if we would ever see this character again after he got sucked into a Tesseract-formed wormhole in Captain America: The First Avenger and it felt awesome to see this plot thread finally resolved. It seems that 70+ years of exile on a distant planet has humbled Red Skull mightily (though I’d love to learn how he found out about what the Soul Stone needs to be unlocked). And speaking of…the moment Red Skull said you needed to sacrifice someone you loved to receive the Soul Stone I knew what was about to happen and Gamora not realizing it at first made it all the more painful. This is the moment that fully humanized Thanos for me, because despite everything he’s ever done, he really does LOVE Gamora and it pains him to do this but he wants this goal more than anything…so she dies. Now whether she’s dead permanently…I don’t know for certain, I’ll get to that argument in a minute.

I need to talk about that ending, that hauntingly perfect ending. I don’t know if I ever mentioned it on here, but for the last several months leading up to the film, I had a suspicion that they might go with the “kill everyone and bring them back with the Infinity Stones” approach but deep down I didn’t think they’d actually do it. Well, they did it alright; granted they didn’t kill everyone, but it was close enough. Actually, after Thanos snapped his fingers (a very awesome moment that caused me to actually cry out “No!!” at the same time as Thor) and then disappeared to parts unknown, I actually thought the people had already disappeared, because it was so quiet!! And then Bucky disintegrated and I realized oh no….we have to watch this happen…and my heart got torn into a million pieces. Because suddenly heroes were dropping left and right: Bucky, Falcon, T’Challa (that one HURT because it was so sudden), Drax, Mantis, Groot (not Groot again!!), Star-Lord, Doctor Strange and…worst of all…Peter (Spider-Man). The moment Peter clung to Tony in absolute terror of his impending death destroyed me inside. And I could tell it destroyed Tony too because he’s the one who got Peter into this in the first place and now he’s had to watch him die. Even when this is undone, it’s probably going to stick with Tony for the rest of his life. And that final shot of the surviving Avengers on Earth sitting there numb with what’s just happened…that was a shock to the system because no Marvel film has ever ended this way, with the villain triumphant and the heroes in disarray. Normally there’s some type of closure, but we haven’t gotten it, and we won’t get it until next year!!

Now then, I said “When this is undone” because you know not all of these characters are going to stay dead. There’s a Black Panther sequel in the works, Spider-Man has a new movie coming, etc. so we know most of these characters are coming back. The big question is, HOW? The last we saw, Thanos has retreated to a distant planet with the Infinity Gauntlet, and as long as he holds it intact, no one can really stop him. Which is why I wonder if some guilt in Thanos will eventually come into play because as things stand, he won’t undo what he’s done. The other question is, who CAN come back? I figure anyone who disintegrated at the end is eligible, but what about those killed before? Like Gamora, Loki, Heimdall, most of the Asgardians (I’m a little confused as to how many survivors there are from Asgard now). I’m pretty sure Loki isn’t coming back as I believe Tom Hiddleston’s contract is up, but at this point anything is possible. And speaking of Loki…what did you think of him dying via Thanos breaking his neck like that? It almost felt…anti-climactic given everything he’s gone through, but then again it’s also fitting as he tried to pull one trick too many with those magic daggers. If that was the last we ever see of Loki, at least he died showing Thor that he really does care about him.

Now for some final thoughts:

-I love that Thor kept calling Rocket Raccoon “rabbit”

-Peter Dinklage’s scenes are perfect

-The fight with Thanos when the Guardians are working with Tony, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange is great and pretty funny considering everyone keeps popping in and out of…time holes? I’m not sure what those are called but I love them.

-It’s interesting that after Hulk gets beat up by Thanos he refuses to come out fully for the rest of the film. Could the Hulk be…scared?

-I want to know how the directors picked which heroes disintegrated and which didn’t. There had to be a rhyme and reason behind it and I want to know what it was!!

And those are my spoiler-filled thoughts on Avengers: Infinity War! What did you think of this film? Were you stunned when the credits rolled? Let me know what you think in the comments below and have a great day!